


Six of Cups, Four of Swords

by prodigy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Drug Addiction, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 06:15:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18005399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/pseuds/prodigy
Summary: Ben Hargreeves tries to keep his brother--and himself--on the devastating road to getting well. It doesn't go in a straight line.





	Six of Cups, Four of Swords

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warnings** : sibling incest; drug addiction and drug use; non-explicit coerced transactional sex/prostitution; drug withdrawal; allusions to canon-typical systemic and familial abuse.

"This, my friend, is what we call the Celtic Cross. It's going to be what most people are looking for, so it tends to be the first one you learn. _Well_. You know, 'learn.'" Air quotes, sort of--a quirk of two spindly sets of fingers. Then: "Of course, like most anything that bills itself as Celtic, it's a fraud. Like me!"

There are many things Klaus has learned how to do in this world that Ben, naturally, has not. Of those, Ben supposes reading tarot is a harmless one.

"You're Celtic now?" says Ben distractedly, the spread fanned out on the floor in front of him.

Klaus reaches out. He was wearing fishnet sleeves before, but he hadn't accounted for the itch; though Ben could have, Ben had seen him stretch it over his arms in the morning and had known, like he could feel it himself. Now he's stripped that off and is sitting in ('wearing' would be an overstatement) an oversized terrycloth robe. He's all gooseflesh, unable to tolerate the press of clothing; and, Ben knows, shivering cold.

There's about four feet between them. And ten cards.

"I mean, I could be anything." Klaus's hand hovers over the cards, with a slight tremble; then he flicks it out, like scattering salt. "Go on, try and pick up the Seven of Cups."

Ben squints at the little upside-down face of a hooded man, and wonders if Klaus bothers to deal his cards right-side-up to a friendlier face. Or a paying one. "Which one is that?"

"The one with seven cups on it."

Ben doesn't glower. He tries to save that for when Klaus is destroying himself or someone else; he can hardly cheapen the going rate of his glower on account of one little Klaus Hargreeves bon mot.

 _Feel real_ , Klaus implored him a few days ago: _I'm a real boy! I'm a real boy!_ \--half snideness half cheerleading, in Klaus's way. Hell, Ben even tried it, kind of. Sitting in one place with a furrowed brow trying to embody realness, whatever that meant. The problem is that isn't the problem. He always feels real.

The Seven of Cups does not. When his fingers overlap the edge, to no effect, he withdraws them again.

Klaus winces. He has such a goddamned way of looking sad. Sometimes he must put on eyeliner just for that. But he is stricken, a little. He puts his hand out to touch Ben's and Ben thinks he can feel it for a hot instant; or maybe that's just himself, his own stupid febrile self. He can't tell from Klaus's end. Klaus doesn't seem to be paying attention; he fusses, clucks his tongue, dusts his hands off for some reason--"Nn. Maybe the Magician's your huckleberry?"

"We'll keep trying," says Ben, emptily.

Klaus shivers again, retreats into that dumb bathrobe of his. It's wizard-themed, with yellow stars. The wizard was significantly larger than he is. While Ben pretends to look for something that looks like a Magician, Klaus runs his hands up and down his own arms, blinks his red-rimmed eyes. He's sick. He needs to sleep and hydrate and get Diego to lock him in again or hold him down. It's the only chance he stands. Klaus is trying; this is what trying looks like, Ben knows. It probably isn't going to work this time either.

There's always a shoulder bare or arms or legs; Klaus shudders with fever and re-bundles, then winces at the texture and loosens again. He should be under blankets. He isn't. He should be telling Diego and Allison. He isn't. He's pallid and marked blue, purple, fading yellow; some are in his elbow. Some aren't. Some are fingerprints. He meets Ben's eye, summons a frosty smile; "See something you like?"

It ought to be hard to discombobulate Ben Hargreeves. He's dead. There's really fuck-all more anyone can do.

* * *

This is hard reset number four. It takes Klaus three and a half days this time to dial his backup dealer.

Ben swipes for the phone but his hand goes through; Klaus rolls his eyes. He wriggles into half a shirt and musses his hair with his hands; Ben grabs at his shoulders and it doesn't connect. He traipses out and Ben goes after him, saying all the usual snappish things--including the part where he stands on the sidewalk and says he's not going further and Klaus can dig his own grave, and Klaus just keeps walking, and Ben fucking follows him.

Yesterday Klaus flushed all his cash down the toilet to remove temptation. But there's currency he can't be rid of. Same deal, same discount; and while Ben raises his voice _Klaus, God, **please**_ \--Klaus stares through him and says, "Whatever. Long as I get it first. Not that you aren't a sexy beast sober too, I'm sure."

Ben reaches for the Horror, telling himself it's only because he knows he won't find it. It's not. But he still doesn't.

The guy probably says something. The guy lays everything out on his glass coffee table, along with a rubber band. Klaus winds the band around his arm. It's too loose and he has to double-knot it.

Ben screams. Screams are unpleasant from grown men. When real, they're like an ugly roar. When he was alive he was usually on the other end of this.

If Dad had renamed Ben Hargreeves, maybe he'd have called him the Witness.

A major reason Klaus is still alive in general is that lots of people have not wanted him to OD in their living space. He doesn't get all of what he bought for what he sold, but he doesn't really understand or care. He gets shoved into an elevator and left alone and he stumbles against the rail. It carries him to the ground floor and he gets out, past the doorman to the street. Then that thing that puppeteers him to conceal takes over; it carries him at a half-normal gait for half a block, at which point he strolls with the animated half-normalcy into a service alley and staggers against a dumpster.

His motions don't pick him back up easily. He's bruised all around and his knuckles are white with pain, neither of which he seems to notice. He looks like what people call him. The cops would eat him alive.

"Klaus," says Ben in his ear; "hey, Klaus. Klaus, it's okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for yelling at you. Klaus, you need to get up. Try to call someone. Get up, Klaus, nobody's going to know you're here."

Or that Ben is. 

"Allison," Ben says, like distilling it to a simple plan will make it real. "Just call Allison. Please get up and call someone. Just get out of here, even if it's the cops. Klaus? Klaus, you've got to keep moving."

Klaus stands there, shaking, for about two minutes. Then he pulls himself together, kind of, but it's not with the same addict's lying composure. He looks wracked. If strangers cared about people like him, they'd be worried. Instead they're going to be worried that he's lowering neighborhood property values.

He makes it home and curls up in bed like a dead bug. Ben sits next to him. Eventually Diego checks on him and fingers his eyelids open and swears; to Diego's credit, he enlists Luther, and Luther has the idea of putting Klaus in the bathtub and monitoring him until he comes to. Luther cradles him and lowers him into the water fully clothed; "He's going to throw up on you," says Ben. He supposes that's one silver lining of all of them coming together again; he gets the chance to not talk to his other brothers, too.

They hand this over to Mom, who sits in patient repose next to the tub, humming something. Baby Beluga, maybe.

Ben deflates, like his own power is out. His teeth hurt and his shoulders too, he notices. He has little remaining interest in the ontology of his own pain. He rubs awkwardly at the tension or what's left of it.

Mom washes his brother's hair, and once he wakes up, she leaves him be.

Klaus lies in his lukewarm bath for a little longer; once his pupils are at a more recognizable shape, he sits up. His remaining clothing is plastered to him. It only draws garish attention. Some time after that, still sitting in the cold water, he glances at Ben.

"I think I'm going to sleep in this water," he says. "It's kind of cold but I'm feeling it."

Ben just stares at him.

Klaus looks away--"Nah, I change my mind. It's cold." He does get up, with alarming alacrity, even as Ben reaches out by vestigial reflex to catch him; "Such a gentleman," he says coolly, but it's a stupid, half-hearted snap, a weak growl probably on principle. He steps out of the tub and makes it two steps before his wet foot is too shaky on the tile and he falls.

Ben catches his arm. They both stare wide-eyed at each other, as if this isn't an intermittent occurrence at this point; Klaus is sopping wet and underneath a layer of sodden flimsy fabric, but dead solid again. He steadies himself and tries to yank his arm away. Ben digs in his fingers. Klaus yanks harder this time, glaring, and gets to his bed and sprawls face-down like he has some other choice. Normally Ben sits next to him on the end of it, with sort of a slumber-party politeness; this time he lies down next to him, facing the ceiling. Klaus sleeps for a while and Ben supposes he does too, and the next day Vanya proposes a reset, for unrelated reasons. The two of them both vote aye, with Five the only nay.

Before that, Klaus draws himself in again like a pill bug and Ben knows he's awake. He says, "I'm really not letting you _requiescat in pace_ , huh?"

Ben shouldn't smile.

"I guess _requiescat_ isn't a, isn't a verb that works that way," says Klaus. "Subjunctive. I dunno. It's been a while."

If you marched your fingers like ants across the space, they are about two and a half finger-steps apart on the mattress. "You don't let anyone do anything _in pace_ ," says Ben. "Get some sleep."

* * *

Ben is not in denial. Not about this specific thing, anyway. They're all like this. Not like _this_ , maybe, though several of them are. They're a horrible bunch of grown-together weeds.

But still, he is pretty fucked up.

It was always a little like this because, if nothing else, he and Klaus used to be the unhappy ones. Now that distinction's been gentrified a bit, as Klaus might put it: but the Horror and the Seance had a certain affinity. He was gloomy. Klaus was sensitive. Thus Klaus was sensitive to his gloom, and liked his company: invited his company, his living brother to banish the shades. That thought makes Ben a little sick now. But, shamefully, less than the next--his knowledge that to begin with, Klaus was sweet. Ben was the miserable one.

So if you asked twelve-year-old Ben Hargreeves which of his siblings he'd marry if he had to pick one, he would have said Klaus. And he would've thought about it before.

The next time he touches Klaus is when Klaus is flirting with stealing from Allison, a lipstick tube between two fingers, about to rifle through her things; Ben traps his wrist against the vanity with his hand and says, " _No_ ," and Klaus turns his head and rolls his eyes and lets it go. That adds a troubling entry to a troubling list--none of his tenderest impulses seem to make it through. Every memory he has of making contact has been with force.

That much he mentions to Klaus, albeit in less telling terms. Klaus laughs it off, which makes Ben smile in spite of himself and also makes his heart ache a little; "I'm related, well, not-related to Diego and Luther! You've got a ways to go before you scare me, big boy."

Klaus sits at his vanity, daubing on eyeshadow. Young Love with a gloss of Burnout. The idea of Klaus needing to purchase Burnout from Sephora is a source of essential humor to Ben.

He does know what to do with the stuff. When he's finished it gives him a lovely cast, a dark illumination. "Don't you think someone should see me this way?"

 _I don't know. Ask someone._ "Stay in and you're less likely to fuck up," Ben says with what he believes to be a pretty comprehensive grounding in fact.

"Aw, gee." Klaus pillows his arms behind his head. "Hey. Don't you ever wish it was just you and me? That we could just, y'know, take a side trip from all the drama and save the world by ourselves for a while? Go it alone?"

 _Yes_. God, yes.

No. Ben is the only Hargreeves whose contribution to Klaus's life is literally nonexistent.

"What are you talking about?" Ben says. "We're always going it alone."

"Do you think you'd always be such a fucking goth if you weren't dead?"

Ben glances up; "I don't know, Klaus, was I?"

One last touch on the eyelid. "You know what, you're right. You super were." Hard resets mean Klaus is always working with the same few sets of possessions in time, his little magpie hoard from drugstores and Ulta and shoplifting; there are more palettes lying around than he ever uses, colors like Wildheart and Cyborg. He's prey to marketing, but it's sweet. An innocent vice. He always goes back to the same $7.99 drugstore eyeliner: it doesn't run. Not when his eyes water, not when anything else. It just smudges in the morning.

* * *

The day after his hit Klaus is sullen, his own brand of serene. He's sorry on day two and redoubles his efforts; then it's his nerves, the shakes, his sickness, his fright and loneliness in the middle of the night. Klaus and Ben live through their own world's end over and over independently.

Ben is solidest again on day two or three, or so they surmise. Klaus lays out another Celtic Cross for Ben to practice moving. It's good sense, and interesting--small objects, keeping them both occupied with something to talk about. Sober Klaus, not sick, that bright little day between the storms, is always the one with ideas.

"Try again. Five of Pentacles," says Klaus.

"Try again. Hierophant," says Klaus again, when it doesn't work.

"It's okay. Try again. Emperor."

When Ben sits back, trying to conceal his frustration, Klaus touches each card in turn; then he turns them each face-up to Ben. Reversed to himself.

Ben picks up the Hanged Man. It's cool crisp cardstock; it must not be a deck Klaus uses.

Klaus claps his hands together in delight. "Hey, look at that!" he says. "You're doing it!"

It takes staring, uncertainly, at Klaus for a moment or two--trying to make up his mind on whether or not to smile--for Ben to realize he's holding a real object in his hand. A real card, not a memory or a manifestation, all those synonyms for mistake, the stuff of dreams when the dead don't quite realize they're dead; it's an actual card and he has it in his hand. Absently, he touches the edges and tries bending it. The material gives and he lets it be.

He wonders what Diego or Allison would see.

"Do you want me to get one of the others?" says Klaus, seeming to understand. Then, one step ahead again: "Or maybe me walking away would disrupt it--you want to go together and find them?"

He remembers them waiting in skeptical disappointment, their brothers and sisters; the memory is surprisingly raw. It wasn't Ben they were doubting, after all. True that they named it another one of Klaus's lies, cries for attention--what would they know?--but the fact is, Klaus is a medium. They'd given up on Ben because they could no longer imagine a life or world for themselves with him in it.

How little they know. The one thing he always is is here.

Klaus's face falls a little. Ben wants to reach out and take him by the shoulders, pained by the expression; but it's accompanied by a slight smile. Sympathy. Taken together, Ben feels like he's seen lifetimes of his gentle concern: just as he's witnessed geologic ages of his spite. This is the look when Five storms past in an unhappy little fury-- _Hey, what's going on?_ \--and Klaus follows him to his endpoint, to say again, _hey. Talk to me._ Or Luther, up on the roof unable to sleep, when Klaus joins him with a theatrical look over his shoulder: _shh, don't tell anyone._ Whatever he disclaims, Klaus has always been an angel of late-night mercy in the Hargreeves household. No one is more likely to discover you at two-thirty AM.

The Four of Wands is topmost and sideways on the Celtic Cross. Klaus gets Ben's attention again by leaning forward and covering his hands with his own hands. He can feel that and, for the first time, it's an uncomfortable shock. Klaus's hands are soft: probably to a real, normal person, just a little warm, but Ben feels the glow of inner heat. His reaction isn't one he likes. "Or we can wait until we master it," Klaus is saying. "Maybe you can learn a card trick?"

That's a welcome derailment. "With... a tarot deck?"

"Ben. You can do card tricks with anything." Klaus leans in and, before Ben realizes, bumps their noses impishly. Then he lets go and sits back on his hands. "You can do card tricks with the Monopoly Chance deck."

Ben tries not to look like someone trying not to touch his own nose.

Klaus brightens. "Oh, wow. Hey, you want to play a board game?"

* * *

In fact Ben knows a lot about Klaus's card tricks. It's one of those things he can do at parties, like tell fortunes; he has a number of tricks, little things, all these interests that are eighty percent dream and twenty percent grift. Tarot decks were originally playing cards, anyway--Klaus told that to an interested pair of raver goths from Bryn Mawr when he was nineteen, in Ben's hearing. It's _we_ , mystics, artists, no-hopers that have marked them up into all this bourgeois _chicanery_. But if there aren't existing card tricks for the Monopoly Chance deck, Ben knows they'd exist in Klaus's hands.

Klaus is pretty good at Scrabble too. That used to be a Hargreeves thing.

One game Klaus is not good at is Monopoly. Ben concedes that two-person Monopoly isn't the world's most suspenseful game; "It's already a godforsaken monopoly," Klaus complains, lying on his side next to the B&O Railroad. "We're playing Time Warner vs AT&T."

Ben agrees, but Klaus was never good at it. He doesn't have the right attitude. Sure, he's competitive--Ben once saw him trip Vanya at Twister. But he likes to lash out. It's not within him to conquer. Risk and Monopoly are cold-blooded games; seven-year-old Klaus was bawling when Rufio died in _Hook_. Probably Dad and Luther thought that was an attention thing too. But Ben remembers sitting next to him to hear about it. Klaus isn't mogul material. It isn't within him not to be affected by things.

At a certain point Klaus puts his head in Ben's lap. He seems surprised, like he was really prepared to just bonk his head on the floor. He closes his eyes and wriggles, getting comfortable.

Ben's hand is arrested in motion about thirty degrees through the arc it would have taken to ruffle Klaus's hair. He puts it back.

Klaus is wearing long sleeves--which look like he robbed Cher--and a jacket. He's getting cold again. It can't be long now.

Maybe they'll reset. Resetting means resetting withdrawal, too. Sometimes Ben thinks his best hope of success is all of their constant, repetitive failure.

Klaus's eyes have settled closed. His head isn't heavy, but it's heavier than Ben expects. He's still not used to the weight of human bodies.

"Can you make me a promise," he says to Klaus's eyelashes and his lips, "Klaus?"

Klaus scrunches up a moue. "Oh, boy. Don't tell me this board game was a trap. You're going to give me trust issues surrounding recreation."

"Klaus, I'm serious."

"How am I ever supposed to look at a poor innocent--"

" _Klaus_." Klaus looks up at him; Ben says, "Promise me just to sell something from the house next time, if you have to."

Klaus flinches, narrows--sits up and says, " _Next time_?" like a wounded animal. Which is, of course, unbelievably fucking unfair. But Ben still feels it.

"Just promise me."

It feels like a mistake; Klaus looks so fiercely miserable, staring back at him, and Ben doesn't know how he looks. Klaus says, "Okay. Fine. I'm sorry about all the ugly shit you see. You know you could just look somewhere else."

Fiercely miserable, and haggard: like all the water is draining out of that tub and the dirt and violation is back on his skin. Ben, right now, wants to look somewhere else--in fact he wants to _be_ somewhere else. But that would be an asshole coward thing to do. "Thank you," he says wearily. "Consider it harm reduction."

"God, I'm never letting you overhear a fucking therapist again," snaps Klaus, but without poison; he sounds horrifically sad. No wonder. Klaus isn't the only one who can't stop doing the things that he's doing.

* * *

They keep his memorial in good condition: _may the darkness within you/find peace in the light_. It's a pretty fucked-up epitaph for your only dead son, but it touches him still. It is the kindest wish his father ever had for him.

He doesn't like to visit it all the same. It's the statue. Mom restores it all the time and it's always a jolt of a horrible, awkward reminder: a reality check that Ben only exists to Ben, and Klaus. Otherwise he's a dead kid from some time ago.

Ben goes to see it without Klaus. This, hesitantly, he reaches out to touch as an experiment--his own bronze face.

His hand goes through. His middle-school self, entombed, doesn't notice. They're neither of them anything any more, without their brother.

It's probably for the better.

Klaus does find some pills, the second time Ben is gone: squirreled away somewhere. He doesn't have to leave the Hargreeves house to do it, but he barely has time to choke them down. Ben tries to drag him; when Klaus shoves him backwards, Ben scoops him up with a frisson of surprise. It's all Klaus's bony limbs at once, more collecting him than anything--his neck jostles Ben's shoulder until he, ornery, tries to keep his head up: "Oh, my hero," he says crossly; "What is this? Is this like when you moved Diego? You _identify_ as stronger than me?"

Ben ignores him and holds him up while he doubles over the toilet and pushes his fingers down his throat. When he seems stable he lets go of him; it's at this point that everything, held back by the dikes and floodgates of decency, pours right back in.

Ben leaves.

Klaus is not to be deterred. There's always getting miserably, spitefully drunk. Vanya finds him by the liquor cabinet. She has the injured exhaustion of someone who didn't want to be the first on the scene of another person's bullshit, and thus obliged to it. Ben doesn't really think she's in a position to talk. Nevertheless she talks her brother down a bit--gingerly puts away the Talisker and the triple sec--and, once he's calmer, summons Allison and Luther. Altogether that's more than Ben's ever done. He's not in a position to anything.

He sits on the roof. He thinks he can feel the cold--cold, wind, rain, these are things he's always experienced. Maybe he continues to kid himself.

Downstairs, Klaus sleeps off the booze and curls up hung over for a while in the morning. A family meeting convenes without him. Ben doesn't suppose they're surprised. "How's the great beyond been treating you?" Klaus says; he opens a sullen, red-rimmed eye.

Ben sits down on the mattress.

"Hey, I honored my promise," Klaus says.

That's true. In a threadbare way, Ben's relieved. These are all things he supposed would happen: and it could be a lot worse. But there's no point in being happy. Like with anything, promises have to be lucky every time. All the awful shit in their souls only has to be lucky once.

"Where do you go, anyway?" Klaus muses aloud, like he hasn't asked the same question dozens of times before, with no further insight; "Do you think you'd still have, you know, the Horror if you passed on?"

This is another shard or fraction of Ben's tremendous ugly love for him: Klaus understands the differences between _have_ and _be_.

"There's horror everywhere," says Ben.

Klaus curls up sort of against him. He nudges his head against Ben's lap again, but instead pushes his forehead up to his thigh. "I know," he says. "You'd get rid of it if you could, right? It's saved our lives, saved a bunch of people's lives. But also, on balance, it probably doesn't always feel like it's worth it?"

They are real fey eyes that Klaus Hargreeves has, the beautiful genuine article: men are always complimenting them, but Ben doesn't think they could pick out the actual quality. He looks like he comes from another place, yes. But also he has such a bright, burning inquisition about this one.

"I understand," Klaus says. He curls his fingers in the comforter (he loves big squashy duvets and also hates sweat or washing them, unsurprisingly). "I mean, I think I actually do--so you have to understand where I'm coming from too, right?"

Ben moves a strand of Klaus's hair. There's a pretense of smoothing, but it's a very thin one.

"I mean. It is worth it." Klaus stares at the ceiling. "I guess. On balance. I got all this shit. And I still have you. I guess without it--well, I suppose I don't 'have' you. It's not a thing we should probably say about each other in the human race. People don't really have other people, I guess."

People stay in the world because they're tethered--missions, vengeances, warnings, places. All their research used to turn that up; Klaus has conducted plenty in his own time, poring over records of dubious occultism. In other words, people stay in the world because they want to.

"I don't know about that," says Ben to his own hands.

* * *

Hell is watching six other people try to mutually settle on a place to eat in the 2010s. You'd think being dead would remove his stake in the matter. In fact it's more like being the person who says they're indifferent and then finds no one else has agreed to this social fiction. They end up at an Applebee's, which nobody likes. A microcosm of group decisionmaking, or Congress, or something. Still it's nice to be out, 'out' with your family; and, this reset, in kind of an awkward marvel, they have an empty chair set out for a seventh.

Klaus orders Five a virgin cocktail to mess with him. Diego reads aloud the words 'Chef Bulgarelli.' Vanya even smiles, for the first time since.

Ben sits and, he supposes, people-watches.

This is a venue for families. None of the other tables seem like people who are there socially and unrelated. There are some kids, some old people: Ben wonders how many of them complain about the food too, or think it's good. He wonders what the food tastes like. Probably same old middle American stuff. Chef Bulgarelli couldn't have changed things much.

Klaus gets a plate of mozzarella sticks and ignores all criticism. He looks happy; he gets a cherry Coke. Watching him is a little joy. Maybe they could all do with some bad food from time to time.

Coming home they're still all in the glow, even Five with his awkward little grin trying to find a home on his face. But once they get there, they disperse: Luther has a lead to chase and Allison with him, and Diego with some notion, and Five and Vanya to their rooms. Klaus goes upstairs and twirls around in place, giddy and sober. "Let's make a blanket fort," he says to Ben.

"We'd need more furniture for that," Ben points out.

"Then we'll get it. Come on, if there's one thing this house has, it's furnishings!"

"You always give up on the engineering part of any whimsical idea once the imagining part wears off," says Ben.

"Oh my god, you're the absolute worst!" Klaus laughs and swats at him, whacks him on the arm with the back of his hand; it connects and Ben raises an eyebrow, reaches up to rub it, as if it hurts. It doesn't. "Okay, okay. What about tarot? You want to learn to actually read?"

"Do I want to learn how to swindle using one of your themed decks?"

Klaus continues to ignore all haters. "Well, if you do, you're going to have to make sure you can actually pick up all of them," he declares, and produces a different deck this time: something pretty and small press and New Age, with pencilwork illustrations. "Here you go. Lesson one: corporeal shuffling."

Ben cuts the deck, precisely, and then pointedly fans out the cards, five by five in a hand. Klaus takes them one by one from him with increasing delight.

"Look at you go. You probably could've eaten a quesadilla burger," he says.

* * *

They quarrel, the Hargreeves family. That's never not been true. Ben was rarely party to the quarreling when he was alive, but that didn't mean never--just that anger always seemed so colossal for him, like a godawful shore-breaking wave, that at a certain point he just locked himself in his room or hid. Now he just witnesses; they quarrel, all the more so when they're despairing, frightened, traumatized, at a loss. A few times Klaus is in that fray or central to it, but most of the time he's tertiary as the others get into it. Now increasingly he hears them fighting downstairs and he doesn't always go to look.

This is a night like that. Family members fighting in the common space of a house is a terrible kind of weather: it boxes you all the way in.

Klaus is reading a worn paperback: _Soldier of Arete_. He's not really concentrating. When voices raise his eyes flicker up, outlined dark tonight. As things get louder, a very close thunder, he hums a little to himself.

It takes a while for Ben to place the tune.

 _If we hold on together._ It's funny how Ben remembers the closing credits of kids' movies better than he remembers the top 40s of today. _I know our dreams will never die._ That goes for the headlines of today too, though, and the contents of the years. Maybe that's being dead. Or is that time?

"Diana Ross has always had my back," Klaus says. He's lying on his stomach, on the rug. They are given to sitting on floors for no real reason. "She was 'I'm Coming Out,' but also she put that song in _The Land Before Time._ I one-fifth credit her for getting them to the Great Valley. I'm giving her Cera's share. Cera wasn't much help. Cera was the me."

"Cera was definitely the Diego," Ben puts in, with all honesty.

"Cera was the _me_. You find your own movies."

Tonight it is Luther and Vanya again fighting. Those are the worst. It's often Vanya--Vanya has been high-strung, sometimes relieved, often awful and miserable, since everything. Ben understands. Or he guesses he does. It's ugly, though, and she often lashes out at Luther--and Luther has been self-contained, worn-out, ashamed and quiet. But he has his limits. Everyone does. There is no infinite amount of justice, Ben is aware, that any human can take, no matter how much they deserve it, no matter how much they try.

He knows Klaus knows it too; it's in the bittersweet furrow of his brow, underneath his unease, the way his gaze travels down through the floor when Luther's voice carries.

"Do you want a book?" Klaus pipes up, looking at him. "You can get one if you like."

The idea should be appealing. Ben's definitely thought about it before. Klaus shuts his and gets up--Ben follows, idly--saying, "Here, I'll give you some choices."

They crash into each other before they get to the bookshelf. That's too dramatic--they bump into each other, which would be ordinary for people, except that Ben isn't much used to touching people or things. He's not sure he's ever touched Klaus accidentally. They come apart, off balance; Klaus blinks at him. Ben steadies him with one arm, not too hard: part of himself must still be telling the story that this is appropriate.

Klaus was wearing a coat before; now the coat is on a bedpost and his shirt is sheer, sunset-orange, with a crepuscular band of Milky Way rhinestones sewn along the bottom hem. Ben lays his hand on his other shoulder and finds the fabric flimsy: rayon-cotton, not much of a chaperone.

He doesn't think about how he is looking, what is on his face. He may never know--Klaus kisses him.

It connects. Klaus's mouth is warm. He is no aggressive kisser, but certain of his will; he tilts his head and parts his lips, opens, gives himself up.

Ben is not aware of holding him, only that he backs him, hard, into the bookcase. Klaus only makes a noise of surprise in colliding with it, recollects his balance and wraps his arms tightly around Ben's neck--which means Ben just smells more of him, his hair and the traces of the last perfume he daubed on each wrist at Saks, for a lark--and tastes his hot mouth and feels his brittle body and shoves his hands up his shirt (Klaus makes a surprised sound there too) and is taken with the terrible, divine shock that his brother Klaus does not vanish, or shapechange, or go.

At a certain point Ben remembers he's a grown man and this is ridiculous. He lets Klaus half-go, or eases up on his grip, breathless, and pulls back. Klaus is a little winded too and wide-eyed. Ben says: "Is this what you want to do?"

Klaus looks genuinely thunderstruck by the question. It seems to occur to him to nod, which he does.

"You don't understand--" He doesn't know what words to put this in. It's a black force within him, an energy. It does animate him. It fills him in.

"You don't understand," says Ben a second time. "I'm only going to do this the way I'm going to do this. If you say yes to this then you're saying yes to that. You have to tell me at any point if you change your mind."

"I don't," says Klaus. "I, I don't understand. I said yes. I want to." There's something raw and pure about his confusion. And something else. Conviction.

Ben shuts his eyes. His brother is still there when he opens them: still breathing hard, silent, remarkably still.

"Come here," he says.

Klaus sucks in a deep, shuddering breath. He obeys. Ben takes him in his arms and kisses him, slower. "Unbutton my shirt," he says, gently, and when Klaus goes about this he struggles to contain something--something ugly-shaped, cousin to desire, or living in the same body. He has Klaus half-undress himself too, leaving the pleasure of the rest to Ben; and he whimpers when Ben palms him through his jeans before he tells him to get on the bed.

The more of Klaus's clothing that comes off, the more his fright thrums in him. Ben knows it--maybe he can feel it. Maybe their heartbeats are the same heartbeat. How many times has Klaus even gone to bed with someone sober? Ben knows that counting it would feel like heartsickness, and wouldn't cool anything, only inflame it uglier.

He shouldn't go too quickly. Klaus is having trouble holding still, underneath him. It occurs to him he has very little notion of what 'too quickly' is, much less the opposite.

Ben sits up a little and thinks of things--but the first thing he thinks of, Klaus balks a little, and when Ben checks in with him, he says: "I--I want--"

There is something unspeakably sweet about seeing Klaus, flustered, select his words. However, it's important that he do so. Ben waits.

"I want you to fuck me," says Klaus. "That's what I want. Please. I love you."

"I'm not going to do something you aren't ready for," says Ben, dismayed at something thick and guttural and stopped-up that comes out in his voice at these times. "This is all different. You know that."

Klaus squirms underneath him. "I'm always ready," he says. "I would've been ready when we were thirteen."

Ben breathes in, deep, and thinks. His thinking disconcerts Klaus, he can tell, because he wriggles more, and his eyes flicker, and he pushes his hips up against Ben's like this will convince him--this is Klaus, terrified of not being loved. Like the two options are to offer himself up to the butcher, or be thrown out in the cold. Ben shouldn't be doing this, he supposes.

"That isn't true," he says. "You shouldn't just do this to make me happy."

Klaus tears up, just beads in the corners of his eyes. Ben almost stops entirely, but Klaus's breathing hitches in a way, he wraps himself around Ben more, he kisses him. None of this is an argument, though, and they both know that--Klaus is nothing if not possessed of the steadiest of minds as well. He, too, considers things very deeply.

What Klaus settles upon is: "It's the only reason to do anything. It's--definitely the only reason to do _this_. Take it if you like."

He does.

Klaus is soft, all over, and underneath that made chiefly out of bone, which isn't surprising; he's also prone to wriggling, altogether, and Ben holds him down more than once as he takes off his clothes--with "shh" or "easy" it seems to center him, calm him down. He's tender in strange places, like the edges of his ears. He's uncomfortably, sadly inured to many kinds of touching, however intimate, at least at first: but murmuring into his ear fills him with a hum of obvious pleasure, a response too keen and electric to be called either happiness or excitement. It's like he goes to a different place: or, for once, he feels like he really is in this one.

He doesn't look haunted.

Ben thinks, unable to really think--that he feels like one person. That he isn't fighting something.

Klaus's nightstand has all manner of things in it: Ben retrieves the Swiss Navy bottle. He disregards protection, which even Klaus briefly blinks at before probably arriving at the same conclusion. This is something he isn't entirely sure how to do; here, Klaus seems to understand too, and gently responds with guidance--decanting into his own palm, half-sitting up, and reaching for a pillow as he does. When Ben waits for him to continue, Klaus peers at him; Ben remembers he's asking for permission. It's incredibly sweet.

He thinks he should make him more ready, but Klaus does a little to himself, with his own fingers, with a little whimper that Ben thinks he could listen to forever--it doesn't seem enough, but he shimmies his hips and hitches his knees. 

It should be a process strange and clinical, a break from the heat and pressure of everything else. Some of it is there's distance between them, briefly: just a hand's breadth or two of air. But there isn't. There really isn't. They are together. Klaus is a medium, Ben thinks; all the living Ben does in this world, he does through him. All the life he has is life from him.

It's never--not ever, he is sure--been any other way.

Ben bends him half-double and takes him, all at once, and claps his hand over Klaus's mouth when he cries out. He twines their fingers together. He fucks him rough and hard on Klaus's childhood bed while the noise simmers downstairs, and it's all he can do not to hold him down, he feels, and tear him in half. That's the way that he is. All things are naked now. But right now he is one and certain and whole, and Klaus--he thinks, with some wonder--is here. He can't hold Tam Lin forever. In this moment he thinks he could keep him here.

When they're both finished, things come back into his mind. Foremost is that Klaus is easy to bruise and Ben's soon going to be learning exactly how much of an inexperienced oaf he was. Ben levers himself off, not really controlling the anxiety on his face; he starts a question.

Klaus grins and reaches up to ruffle Ben's hair. "It's okay," he says. "I'll make a special mark for you on my bedpost."

Ben's taken aback and laughs, abashed.

"I'm okay," Klaus clarifies--"Wow, you're strong. Wow. I mean, I was going to brag about popping your cherry, but actually I think you popped my _ghost_ cherry: that's got to be a bigger deal?"

"Jesus, Klaus--"

"Is this twincest? Wait, septupletcest?"

"How do you manage to make everything," says Ben with not much of a straight face, "so unbearably weird?"

Klaus flips over (with a little wince) onto his stomach, kicks his feet and snickers. "Because it is," he says. "I'm speaking truth to denial. Hey, I wanted to say--"

" _I_ wanted to say I love you," Ben says, with a rush of miserable sincerity; "I didn't say so at the time and I should have. I love you."

"You're an interrupter. Let's not get into a recursive love spiral, okay?" Klaus curls up and puts his head on Ben's shoulder. The time slowly returns such that they can wonder things like how it is they have body heat to wick away. "Actually, I wanted to say I'm forming a theory. About how this all works--you and me, metaphysically. But it isn't ready yet. It's still in the oven."

Ben's content to hear him chatter as they lie together, pondering the nature of Ben's clothing now that Klaus has removed it from his body. There's a part of him that dismally expects it all to pop out of existence once they start thinking about it, of course: but eventually Klaus does sort of sit up, against his pillows, and experimentally lift up Ben's cast-off shirt. It is a shirt. For now it appears he's not a guest in Klaus's world; it's as though he'd been here all along.

Physical violence. Art and writing. Cosmetics--"Cosmetics?" says Ben and Klaus speculates on whether, if he put lipstick on Ben, it would stay on.

"I wonder if everybody else could see you now, and this shirt," says Klaus.

They do not really consider testing this right now.

Klaus goes on with his excited list of possibilities. The bookshelf offer, he notes, is still open. Ben thinks about how the future is infinitely more awful when he's in its path. He thinks about the other men Klaus is going to have sex with, after this. He thinks about being around that. He thinks about what a shitty, awful thing that is for him to think. He kisses Klaus on the forehead and gets up to get a book. _Berlin Stories_ or _Tunnel in the Sky._ One or the other.

* * *

Klaus is anxious now too. That's Ben's only (slightly fucked) solace. The following days, sober, he lives in uncertain dampened spirits; eyes flicking, periodically, to Ben.

They do it again in two days. They figure out safe codes; he holds Klaus face down over his bed and Klaus pleads with him, _please, it's too much_. And he cries and he pleads for more.

Later Ben leafs through a book and itemizes, to himself, objections to what he's doing:

One -- Klaus is fragile. Ben doesn't like the word _damaged_ : it's the kind of thing assholes say, and Diego. But it's true many things have damaged him, and if he isn't damaged, the adjective, then he heals brittle every time.

Two -- Klaus cannot leave him. There is functionally no breaking up with Ben. Everything that he does now he does in the view of his brother; Klaus lives in a room with innumerable cellmates, crowded out of his own life by the dead. He never gets away from it; he can just try to pretend he does. Ben is the most inescapable. He's put his hands on him too now. That's not something he can step away from.

Does he really need more than the two?

Klaus trembles sometimes when he sits still; he has the shakes again. Ben doesn't necessarily understand how these things work: there was a time in his life when he thought he could categorize their world with words like _medical_ and _psychosomatic_ , but he's long since realized he doesn't have a clue. He doesn't think anyone else does either, even the experts, even the experts who try. There doesn't seem to be a vocabulary in sober-person language for what happens to addicts.

So Ben just wraps him in his arms, when he can, and holds him. It's the only thing he can provide; he can't always provide it. It's not consistent yet. When he tries and finds himself insubstantial again, he sees Klaus's face crumple. It makes him feel like a sucking black hole of failure. Even looking at himself in the mirror is pathetic. He's just a placeholder.

The thing is, Klaus is sorry too: he has that horrible sorry look. Ben knows why. It's because he thinks it's _his_ fault. Because he's the only one doing anything.

He shivers violently when he curls up alone. Ben talks to him, but it feels like his speech vanishes into the air too. Like he's imagining this all, an elaborate fucking dream.

Klaus steals from Allison. A Louis Vuitton bag, one that she switches out for her regular one, with a backup credit card. Ben shouts at him and Klaus flips him the bird and covers his ears with his hands. It's not a straight shot from petty theft to successful fencing, especially if you're Klaus Hargreeves and not any kind of goddamned professional, but there's more than one way to fuck up your life. Klaus calls him an asshole and--even worse--"do you think you get a deed and a title every time you get someone to suck your dick? Oh, _boy_ , have I got news for you--"

Worse than that, Ben snaps back at him: don't be a goddamned child. This is just junkie you talking. You're not fooling anyone.

It's an awful spell in the making and Allison breaks it when she comes in, when Klaus is back to look for more. Whatever was going on--tearing itself apart--evaporates; it's just Klaus in Allison's room, a deer in headlights, and Allison's face. She crumples a little too. She doesn't yell; he runs off, and she calls Vanya and Luther.

Klaus holes up in the attic, behind some boxes. At first Ben thinks he has a stash, but it just seems to be a place he's thought of. It's stupid. He doesn't even know any of the good hiding places.

"Go away," says Klaus, when Ben sits down on a box. Then he elaborates: "Fuck off, Ben."

"Just talk to Allison. Explain what you're dealing with." Maybe five degrees to the west, in words, this would have been good advice. Even saying it Ben knows it's just hurting him. "She's not going to push you out of her life for a mistake, Klaus. It's not exactly the worst thing you've done."

" _God_." Klaus pushes his hands into his face, then his hair--he's crying. "God, you really don't stop, do you? Why do you follow me around everywhere? Why are you the only person who follows me around everywhere? I'm some kind of goddamned spirit medium," he says, "and I can't even reach anyone I _want_ to see."

Ben feels cold.

"You know who could help me 'deal with' this right now? Why don't I ever see him?"

"Oh, I don't know, Klaus," says part of Ben that already, he knows, was waiting to be asked. "We're all tethered to what we're invested in, aren't we? Shouldn't you be asking him?"

Klaus wraps his arms around his head, his knees, like he always used to when he was trying to get away from people: Dad, Luther, all the ghosts. Of course it never worked. Ben has the strangest, most barren premonition that if he reached out right now, he could lay his hand on Klaus's bared upper arm; and, next to it, the dead certainty that it would make Klaus feel fractionally, unwillingly better. He does not.

Getting caught does trim down Klaus's options, if nothing else, and Luther and Allison care. There's always his bedroom window, but it's raining and Klaus looks at the dismal evening weather. He opts to lie down on his bed instead; as an afterthought, he wriggles out of his shirt and looks, hollow and resentful and hopeful, at Ben. "Can we forget about it?" he says, like that's what he wants to know.

Ben just waits until he sleeps, and sits on the sill himself and reads.

* * *

Sexual moratoriums for moral purposes, of course, or to make a point, are some of the most pointless shit. Even Ben already knew that. Either you break up altogether or you just cave and go back to your lives without learning anything, a little sadder and more anxious.

Ben also doesn't really have self-control, he's pretty sure. Powerlessness is usually a good substitute. When he isn't that, he has the same horrible hunger as anyone else.

They sleep together and Klaus digs his fingernails, by accident, into Ben's back. Ben holds him underneath him for a while when they're done until he stops whimpering, and then they chance to discover--"Look, I hurt you," says Klaus, brattishly pleased in a way that cheers them both up.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," says Ben.

He knows what helps Klaus sleep at night. It's opiates, or it's the presence and warmth of someone else: safety, even though the first one is a lie. Most of the time the second one has been too.

All of the time, actually.

In their detente, then their armistice, they go back to 'teaching' Ben to do a tarot reading; Klaus goes through each of the cards and explains what they mean or can mean. Ben wonders aloud if people are disappointed if their reading doesn't contain enough major arcana. ("Always," says Klaus, smiling. "You have to stack!") At some point, Klaus leans in, uncertain, and stops before he touches foreheads with Ben: he looks red-rimmed again and like he's losing a little weight. They're going to have to reset soon, it seems. It'll drag his progress, such as it is, back to zero. But it's saved him before, too.

Klaus looks like he's brimming with something: not tears, exactly, though tears might express a little of it. Ben bows his head and completes the motion, a little clumsily; they sit like that, nose to nose. He feels something overpowering. Love, he guesses, but--that's just the water he swims in, surely. He feels it all the time. Sometimes things are more than that.

The only other times the world has felt this close was when terror and rage brought it there--dashing pills out of Klaus's hands or making him throw up, when Klaus has flung everything there is between them.

Klaus agrees, actually, when he hesitates to bring it up. "I think it has to do with the strength of a--connection, on both sides. That's what I think. Hey. That means we need each other, right?" A hopeful smile: a tattered little olive branch.

"Only one of us needs the other one," says Ben.

That puts a confused wrinkle in Klaus's nose: then he sighs, and stretches his hand out too, palm to palm. He fans out his fingers.

"Everything good I've ever learned--barring basic verbal skills and arithmetic and bargain hunting--I learned from you, you know," he says. His breath is warm.

"Have you? Did you really learn that last one?"

Klaus looks fake-offended; "You know, I wasn't such a tremendous jerk before I knew you," he says, and elbows him and winks. "Okay, okay. Why don't you try your hand at some divination? Try shuffling."

The deck is solid and easy in his hand. Ben lays out the pattern--then, with a peculiar stage fright, he turns one over. Then a few more. "Is a deck really supposed to have three Devils in it? Are you sure you're good at stacking?"

"It's a paranormal sign, obviously," says Klaus. "Interpret it as it lies."

Ben kisses him on the forehead and tries to summon his inner bullshit artist. Klaus leans back on his hands, folds his knees up, and listens with owlish wonder until Ben clears his throat and tells him a story.


End file.
